“More workers have died from COVID-19 in the last 18 months in the meat and poultry industry, than died from all work-related causes in the industry in the past 15 years,” as one expert testified.
Healthcare Regulation and Reform
Before Ben Gilmore was a senator, he lived in the Delta in southeast Arkansas and witnessed firsthand the region's struggles with health care, infrastructure, education and more.
Dr. Valencia Andrew-Pirtle began working in Blytheville more than 20 years ago as a family medicine specialist and, over time, she has learned the most dangerous disease Mississippi County faces is one she wouldn't have thought about decades ago.
This story as part of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2021 California Fellowship.
The Central and Northwest metropolitan areas of Arkansas have grown in population over the past decade, but towns in the Delta — with the exception of Jonesboro — lost people in large numbers.
In recent years, there have been efforts to increase other competency restoration alternatives – like jail-based or outpatient methods – but for some people, those options are not always available.
A year and a half after COVID-19 outbreaks tore through many of the nation's meatpacking plants, workers and their towns are still working on ways to enhance safety.
Moms talk about what it’s like to be pregnant in jail, and about their lives before and after incarceration.
To put the Delta on the same playing field as other parts of the state for business growth, there needs to be a large-scale investment in infrastructure, health care, school systems and more, medical experts said.
The 1918 influenza epidemic is still remembered keenly in parts of rural Alaska.